Black of Night
by NeoVenus22
Summary: Klaus hates the days he's running, but he hates the nights more. Film spoilers. KlausViolet. [complete]


Film spoilers, as it takes place in the movieverse. Dedicated to Sarafu, happy birthday!

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He lies in the darkness, and it swallows him up, until he becomes a part of it, becomes one with it, and his eyes adjust and he can see. He can see his entire future, vague ghosts of furniture, dust and cobwebs gathered in black corners. Scattered, empty, and bleak.

He lies in the darkness: lets it seep in through his eyes, soured with tears; lets it skate past the wheezes that escape through his dust-filled throat. He allows it to become him, to carve away at his soul, bit by bit, until little remains.

The trial is over, and Olaf has received his just rewards. But there are no rewards for three weary orphans, who just want a roof over their heads and parents to kiss them goodnight. Violet lays her lips to Klaus's forehead in a poor imitation before going to bed, but his bleary eyes haven't closed in three nights. He appreciates the gesture, and is soothed to a degree, but he can't help but notice that the kiss has a much different effect when it comes from her. So Klaus lies, stiffly, waiting for dawn to creep up over the horizon and erase the long nights filled with damning thoughts.

His brain is as dusty as the attic they're camped out in, because he can only think of one thing, over and over again. He can't read to ease his mind. The last book he laid his hands on was a simple encyclopedia volume. I. (I, Klaus.) He'd read the passage, committed it to memory, and has hated himself every moment since. _Sexual relations... close kinship... the marriage of brothers and sisters is prohibited and abhorred..._ (I, Klaus, take thee, Violet...) _Incest taboo..._

(Taboo. Noun. "A ban or an inhibition resulting from social custom or emotional aversion." If he's not emotionally averted - and he's not, not _really_ - is it a taboo?)

In the beginning, it wasn't anything to be concerned about. He knew that his sister was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, but he was five and she was seven and he didn't really know too many other girls. He knew that his sister was the smartest girl he'd ever known, but she was nine and had just invented a device that let the doorbell ring directly in the room of the person you wanted to see, and Klaus's bell went right to the library. He knew that his sister was the bravest girl he'd ever met, but she was fourteen and had just barely escaped being Olaf's Countess, and looked none the worse for wear.

Some artists claimed that the sculpture already existed in the marble, and they were only chipping away to uncover it, like archaeologists dug in the earth to find relics. Klaus liked to believe that the bond he and his sister shared was always there, under the surface, and it took archaeologists like his parents' and Uncle Monty's and Aunt Josephine's deaths to uncover it, and sculptors like too many close calls to hone it down to a piece of art, beautiful and untouchable. (Violet, too, is beautiful and untouchable.)

Klaus Baudelaire lies in the darkness, lets it wash over him and complete him. It is his salvation, the blackness that hides his feelings for his sister. It is his damnation, the blackness that brings said feelings closer to the surface, so that he can dwell on them night after night.

When the morning comes, the sun's rays spill in through the cracked window, seeking Violet's sleeping face to illuminate it. She seems serene, even though Klaus knows they're as far from being untroubled asleep as they are awake. When she finally opens her eyes (and he has to pretend he wasn't watching), she is instantly alert (they have to be, even now) and fixes him with a sad smile. Her melancholy pains him, but at the same time, there is something in her eyes that is brighter than the sunlight that mottles their surroundings in orange glow. It cuts through the darkness that blankets Klaus inside and out, and there is warmth and light for the middle Baudelaire. Until the night comes again.


End file.
